Orlando B. Willcox

Orlando Bolivar Willcox (16 April 1823-11 May 1907) was a Union Army Major-General during the American Civil War and the Plains Indian Wars.

Biography
Orlando Bolivar Willcox was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1823, and he graduated from West Point in 1847 and served in the US Army in the Mexican-American War, against the Native Americans on the frontier, and in the Third Seminole War before resigning in 1857. He became a lawyer in Detroit, but he returned to the army when the American Civil War broke out, becoming colonel of the 1st Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was wounded and captured in the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861, and he was released on 19 August 1862 and appointed a Brigadier-General by President Abraham Lincoln. He later commanded a division in Ambrose Burnside's IX Corps at the Battle of Antietam and the Battle of Fredericksburg, and later fought at the Battle of Fort Sanders in Knoxville and became a Major-General during the Overland Campaign in 1864. Following the Siege of Petersburg, he led the first Union troops into Petersburg, and he ended the war in North Carolina. He was mustered out on 15 January 1866, and he returned to his law practice in Detroit. When the US Army was expanded in July 1866, he was given command of a US Army regiment, and he mostly served in San Francisco from 1869 to 1878, when he was given command of the Department of Arizona, putting down Apache raids. In 1886, he was promoted to Brigadier-General, and he headed the Department of the Missouri from 1886 to 1887. From 1889 to 1892, Willcox served as Governor of the Soldiers' Home in Washington DC, and he moved to Canada in 1905 and died on Cobourg, Ontario at the age of 84. Willcox, Arizona is named in his honor.